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  • Essay / Macbeth: Descent into Madness

    Weaknesses can mean the difference between success and failure. It is crucial to try to overcome flaws to ensure goals are achieved. In the play Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare, Macbeth has many flaws which lead to his death. Macbeth's heroic downfall is caused by his moral weaknesses, namely that he is overly ambitious, lacks morality, and is easily influenced by others. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay To begin with, Macbeth is far too ambitious and selfish. His goals and desires come before anything else and he will do whatever it takes to achieve them. At the beginning of the play, when the witches tell him the three prophecies, Macbeth wants to ensure that they come true – especially the one that says he will be king of Scotland. This motivates him to want to remove anything that gets in his way and leads him to absolute disaster. He kills King Duncan, which triggers the downfall of everything else in his life. Macbeth foreshadows his coming failure when he says: "I have no sting/To prick the sides of my intention, but only/A hunched ambition, which surpasses itself/And falls upon the other-” (1.7.25-28) He is motivated by his ambition, but moving too fast could lead to disaster, as it did. Madness and Magic: Shakespeare's Macbeth, by Frank McGuinness, shows that Macbeth has a desire for power and authority. “The thirst for information – for action – corresponds to Macbeth’s appetite for power.” His determination to become king deteriorates his values ​​and does not allow him to focus on anything other than that. Macbeth's desire to become king overrides his morals and conscience. At first he has difficulty deciding whether to kill King Duncan. He lists reasons why it would be right, such as the fact that he wants to be king. He also explains why it would be morally wrong to do so, saying that he is taking Duncan in and that he should be hospitable. Lady Macbeth convinces him that he must do it and eventually he goes through with it. Macbeth struggles with his own thoughts, but ultimately his lack of values ​​causes him to not follow the right moral path. After killing Duncan, he becomes unstable, feeling guilty but still yearning to kill anyone he still perceives as an obstacle. The lack of values ​​and morals makes him incapable of choosing right and wrong. He has a lot of bad thoughts and cannot think straight. He relates this to Lady Macbeth when he says, “My mind is full of scorpions, dear wife! » In the article entitled Macbeth: I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing. A World of Action versus a World of Thought by EBSCOhost it is stated that "...Macbeth's awareness that he is about to commit an execrable crime and, at the same time, this also suggests his inability to see beyond action for its consequences” (EBSCOhost,183). Macbeth does not think about the realistic outcome of Duncan's murder - only that he will become king. Any reasonable person knows that killing someone as important as a king carries extreme repercussions. However, Macbeth is mentally unstable and does not know right from wrong. As Macbeth no longer has morals, he can no longer think for himself and is easily influenced. He lets others control his life and his decisions. There are many examples of this in the play, such as when he listens to the witches' prophecies and psychologically lets them control his actions because he wants them to come true. Another example shows him giving in to Lady Macbeth when she questions his manhood by saying, "Would you like to have that/that you.